absolutely ! The diversity of the designs from the different teams is one of the coolest things about the whole endeavor. Imagine if there was only one kind of restaurant or one kind of way to travel. I'm sure within the next 50 years or so, there will be some standardization. But in the mean time, here's to the private sector's ability to come up with those crazy and diverse plans!

Did you all see the good news on the X Prize News home page about Lincoln Electric pitching in with da Vinci? I was a little curious as to whether this helped whittle down the 500 grand they still need. So I emailed them.

Brian Feeney was nice enough to answer me (on a Saturday, no less!) pretty quickly. While the LE deal is definitely a very good thing ($50,000.00 worth of top-notch equipment, etc), it doesn't go towards the 500 big ones they still need.

I'm really really hoping that someone steps up to the plate and sponsors the rest soon...

You know, 500 grand ($500,000) isn't that much considersaiding how you got it. One possibility is a public fundraiser on Devinci's behalf. I'm sure they could raise $500,000 (maybe a little more) depending on how you do it.

the diversity of the concepts is one of the greatest consequences of the XPRIZE and the CUP hopefully will help to keep it by giving those additional chances that need a few motns or years more.

The Foundation not only is opening the space for the genral public but is giving a very big incentive to technical and technological innovations too - it should receive donations by federations of engineers, technical oriented institutions etc. to finance the cash prizes of the CUP and future XPRIZEs. It sholud receive prizes itself!

What we see going on in this competition is what a well-hated prominent Economist formulated many decades ago describing th character of economic competition: "competition as a method of detetction" (my own translation from German to English - the Economist was Freidrich August von Hayek).

In another part of this message board a few weeks ago I've made an avalution of all the concepts - at the supposingly optimal level I've listed 16 or 17 combinations of launch, landing and staging. Someone should help to let be there at least one successful launch of each of these concepts - to find out, how it is working. And I really have in mind the concepts here and not the teams - there are several teams having nearly the same concepts...